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'We are looking into whether it would be appropriate to rip up the charter in the middle of it, or whether one should wait.'

The current royal charter allowing the BBC to charge a licence fee expires in 2015.

MP Jeremy Hunt: 'Root and branch discussion'

In addition, Mr Hunt said the Tories would scrap proposals to add a 50p-a-month tax on all telephone lines to help pay for superfast broadband access across the country.

Also for the chop would be plans forcing the BBC to share around £130million of the licence fee with other broadcasters.

He said he wants to improve the conditions for commercial TV in the UK by deregulation, rather than spending taxpayer funds.

'[We will have] a very fundamental root-and-branch discussion with the BBC about all its activities,' Mr Hunt said.

Mr Hunt cited last year's incident in which DJs Russell Brand and Jonathan Ross left obscene messages on the voicemail of actor Andrew Sachs and high salaries as evidence of the corporation being 'out of touch'.

'That is clearly out of touch with the hard times the rest of the electorate is going through,' he said.